Love the transfer incremental change. Thanks.

progress...love it!...thanks adlorenz!

Posted by bripat42 on 1/14/2021 12:12:00 PM (view original):

Posted by damag on 1/14/2021 12:01:00 PM (view original):

Posted by kmcelroy85 on 1/14/2021 11:45:00 AM (view original):
These changes check a lot of boxes, thanks! If I had a wish list for the next priority it would be individual base-stealing settings by player.

... Aaaand here we go...

Those asking for individual base-stealing settings would be terrible at chess. Because they clearly aren't able to see beyond just the one change and ignore what the next move would be, then the next one after that, and so on.

Explain? Curious to hear your concern.

Posted by kmcelroy85 on 1/14/2021 3:45:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bripat42 on 1/14/2021 12:12:00 PM (view original):

Posted by damag on 1/14/2021 12:01:00 PM (view original):

Posted by kmcelroy85 on 1/14/2021 11:45:00 AM (view original):
These changes check a lot of boxes, thanks! If I had a wish list for the next priority it would be individual base-stealing settings by player.

... Aaaand here we go...

Those asking for individual base-stealing settings would be terrible at chess. Because they clearly aren't able to see beyond just the one change and ignore what the next move would be, then the next one after that, and so on.

Explain? Curious to hear your concern.

"Now here's a guy": Dorssys Canseco.

In season 36 of his career, at the height of his powers, he had 96 Baserunning and 99 Speed. He stole 92 bases and was caught once. Basically 99% success rate.
If I can make him the only guy on my team who runs, my team ends up with a 99% success rate. And considering the season record in that league is 126 SBs, what if I set him to Very Aggressive?

This game, being a statistical simulation, is probably designed to achieve average amounts in order to simulate reality. I would guess, or think, that if you wanted individual settings, you'd have to rejig the entire stolen base / speed portion of the game, so that A/ you couldn't send this guy literally every time he got on base, or B/ 96/99 wouldn't be anywhere near as efficient, and C/ you'd still have to have some way your slugs would blunder their way into 2 SB every season.

Not to mention at all that those are 80s numbers. Today's players lead the league with less than 40.

What is the benefit of the opener strategy pitch counts for overall game play?

Seems like it could create a potentially outsized benefit. Owners playing against it don't get to counter because simmy runs our teams.

Posted by damag on 1/14/2021 11:12:00 AM (view original):
Transfer Budget update - added the ability to view/transfer budget in smaller increments (as small as $100,000).

This is actually a massive change and will have a rather outsized effect. Not necessarily bad or good. I'm sure everyone will have interesting experiences.

+1

Posted by bripat42 on 1/14/2021 4:13:00 PM (view original):

Posted by kmcelroy85 on 1/14/2021 3:45:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bripat42 on 1/14/2021 12:12:00 PM (view original):

Posted by damag on 1/14/2021 12:01:00 PM (view original):

Posted by kmcelroy85 on 1/14/2021 11:45:00 AM (view original):
These changes check a lot of boxes, thanks! If I had a wish list for the next priority it would be individual base-stealing settings by player.

... Aaaand here we go...

Those asking for individual base-stealing settings would be terrible at chess. Because they clearly aren't able to see beyond just the one change and ignore what the next move would be, then the next one after that, and so on.

Explain? Curious to hear your concern.

1.) First thing to happen is that everyone sets players with speed/baserunning less than, say, 80+/80+, to never steal.
2.) That leads to leaguewide success rates being absurdly high -- think percentages in the high 80s, maybe even the 90s -- because those are the kinds of success rates players with 80+/80+ speed/baserunning ratings have.
3.) Next, owners realize that arm accuracy/arm strength for catchers is now mostly meaningless because the only players running are the ones who already have high success rates against even the best throwing catchers. So, AA/AS becomes the lowest priority for catchers -- and the catcher position becomes just another place to stash DHs with acceptable pitch calling ratings.
4.) Owners rush to the forums to complain about how unrealistic basestealing is in this game and how it needs to be fixed.
5.) Rinse.
6.) Repeat.

Basestealing in HBD has its flaws, but replacing it with a simplistic solution that leads to even more flaws is not the answer. Fixing basestealing would require a massive overhaul of the game engine that would impact how speed and baserunning impact success rates in addition to how pitchers and catchers hold runners.

It's a seemingly glaring issue when you first start playing and tinkering with the game, but it becomes clear to most pretty quickly when you learn about the game play and details

Appreciate the explanation on the base-stealing concerns. I've thought about these, although maybe not as thoroughly as you two seem to have, and I also don't want a situation where you have 95% of the attempts coming from 5% of the players and a 90+% league SB success rate. If I could re-design base-stealing from scratch, I'd probably do two things:

1) I'd flatten out the probabilities so a 99/99 guy was successful at around the MLB career record which I think is 86/87% and basically nobody was successful less than 40% of the time
2) I'd change the settings per player to simply "Green Light: Yes/No" where if it was yes, they attempted to steal reasonably often, moreso if they were faster, and moreso against worse-throwing catchers and if it was "no," they still attempted sometimes but frequency/success were impacted by your base coaches in addition to things like the catcher's arm and their own understanding of their ability.

I don't have a programming background and this may be a nightmare, which is why I said it's what I would do from scratch. I actually think the current setup is about the worst thing you could possibly have in terms of actually simulating the way teams approach base-stealing. It leads to the rational choice being either 1) go out of your way to have only high-basreunning rating players on your team or 2) zero out base-stealing. For my part, I just think it's fun to have base-stealing so I let my guys do it a little bit if they can get to 70% or so on aggregate, but then in the playoffs I completely eliminate it because I want to win at all costs. Frankly, at this point, it would almost be better to not let the manager have *any* control over base-stealing frequency and just have speed determine attempts and BR determine success %. At least then you wouldn't need to have a guy with 10/35 Spd/BR ratings go 2 for 12 in order to get value out of your elite base-stealing leadoff hitter.

All of this is my $0.02 and if I haven't caveated enough already, I don't think I have a perfect fix or anything.

Posted by ollym on 1/14/2021 4:23:00 PM (view original):
What is the benefit of the opener strategy pitch counts for overall game play?

Seems like it could create a potentially outsized benefit. Owners playing against it don't get to counter because simmy runs our teams.

Open with a leftie. Then switch to a rightie to have the in a favourable matchup. I won a playoff series by doing this.

For the base stealing I honestly can’t see a way that makes it more fair then it is now without a major overhaul. I usually build teams to swipe bags so I have 2-4 players that end up attempting 10 steals anc getting caught 8 times but it’s worth it and 2 it’s hilarious when my 5-10 230 pound catcher swipes second base.

Posted by hockey1984 on 1/14/2021 4:56:00 PM (view original):

Posted by ollym on 1/14/2021 4:23:00 PM (view original):
What is the benefit of the opener strategy pitch counts for overall game play?

Seems like it could create a potentially outsized benefit. Owners playing against it don't get to counter because simmy runs our teams.

Open with a leftie. Then switch to a rightie to have the in a favourable matchup. I won a playoff series by doing this.

For the base stealing I honestly can’t see a way that makes it more fair then it is now without a major overhaul. I usually build teams to swipe bags so I have 2-4 players that end up attempting 10 steals anc getting caught 8 times but it’s worth it and 2 it’s hilarious when my 5-10 230 pound catcher swipes second base.

Not the individual benefit. That’s obvious.

I don't really care about using "The Opener" strategy in this game because it's a real life strategy that has no bearing on the way our simulated players exist.

The point of "The Opener" is that you use a guy to get you through the top half of the order once. Then the main pitcher comes in, goes through the order twice, and then you're into the bullpen. The whole thing is based on the very real life idea that if the hitters see a guy who isn't really a competent SP more than twice they'll light him up third time round.

Our batters don't "adjust".

Posted by damag on 1/14/2021 6:22:00 PM (view original):
I don't really care about using "The Opener" strategy in this game because it's a real life strategy that has no bearing on the way our simulated players exist.

The point of "The Opener" is that you use a guy to get you through the top half of the order once. Then the main pitcher comes in, goes through the order twice, and then you're into the bullpen. The whole thing is based on the very real life idea that if the hitters see a guy who isn't really a competent SP more than twice they'll light him up third time round.

Our batters don't "adjust".

I’m wondering how it impacts the game play and especially the owner playing against the opener. Seems like a potential exploit that requires some guessing to play against because shimmy has to manage the counter-strategy.

So playing against it requires more time spent to find out the LR that’s likely coming in next and setting a line up for that or completely ignoring a platoon.

In real life, you can sort of see how it’ll play out in most cases and the ‘bulk’ guy is normally partially known most times. Our hitters don’t adjust but the platoon splits can matter and this is a potentially huge advantage without much of a counter so far. Maybe I just haven’t played it out or thought of it enough, but the 40 pitches required the the ‘opener’ owner to assume some risk. This seems to put the non-opener teams at a game play disadvantage.

I don’t think I like it, but also interested in the overall game play aspect

I think the fear is that many users will employ an opener strategy where the owner takes advantage of the splits (i.e. right starter followed immediately by a leftie reliever or vise versa). I don't think this is a rational fear. 1. You have to have the horses to do it; 2. You have to have the time to adjust it. It isn't like a four or five man rotation where you set it and forget it; 3. if some owners do use it, I don't think it will be many and I think the overall impact will be negligible; 4. I have already done some testing on it in my PM2 games and if you have your guy set to less than 40 pitches as a starting pitcher and move him from a SP1 to an SP2, he immediately gets reset to the old default of 40 so mistakes are going to be made and because of this I think it will prevent people from using it frequently.

I have used an opener strategy in some of my Worlds, but this was before the move from 40 to 20. I have to have the horses to do it though. I am not going to waste an elite starter by having him as an opener. For me to use openers, I would have to have mediocre to above average pitchers as the openers and a bunch of opposite handed pitchers in the bullpen. I can't always pull this off.

In Moonlight Graham, I have three below average Left Handed pitchers that have a stamina rating of 40+. They each pitch about 40 pitches to open each game. Then my entire bullpen is full of right handed pitchers. I am only in my second season in this World so this is not an ideal setup. I am working on getting better pitchers, but all of them are right handed relief pitchers in my farm so until I can find multiple above average to great SPs (no matter what hand), I will continue to employ this approach in this World

In Cooperstown, I have an elite Left handed starter so I am not going to use him as an opener. I have him as a big innings guy when he has 100 energy and the other two lefties are openers. The rest of the bullpen is right handed pitching. Ideally, I would have a bunch of great starting pitchers and good to great relief pitchers to back them up, but this is my first year in this World and although this team I took over was blessed with great starting pitching, the bullpen was lacking so I use some of the starting pitchers as bullpen guys and it is working out decent so far. Ideally, I would have used a more traditional 4 or 5 man starting pitcher rotation, but i couldn't afford a good RP in free agency so I feel like using the above strategy was the most optimal.

In Guinness, I have dabbled with leftie openers, but I just don't have the horses to do it consistently so it is more sporadic. I have an elite Leftie SP coming up soon so we'll see how i use him when he gets up.

In Dirt, I have a leftie that is a dominant starter so I use a strategy that is similar to the one I use in Cooperstown where the elite pitcher isn't an opener, but the other lefties are. The difference here is that half of my bullpen is still full of leftie pitchers so I rarely get the split advantage.

In Weaver, I have been here for 12 seasons so i have been able to recruit starting pitching. I have a traditional 5 SP setup here and ten of my eleven pitchers on the staff are righties.

In Glavine, my entire staff is full of righties until this upcoming season. I may employ a short opener strategy now since we can do it with 20 pitches. We'll see how it goes.

In Moneyball, I have an above average big inning lefite pitcher, a 53 stamina leftie pitcher and a 47 stamina/70 durability type lefite so I can pitch my above average big inning guy when he hits 100 energy and I can pitch my above average 53 stamina 70 pitches when he is 100 and the DITR guy can now pitch 20 to 30 pitches each game in between.

As shown above, in order to employ the opener strategy, you have to have the horses AND you have to have the time to check the staff every matchup to be sure they didn't get rocked and mess up your strategy. For these reasons, I don't think many owners will employ the opener strategy. Also, for argument sake, if you are checking the matchup every day and you see that you have a matchup against a Randy Johnson/Chris Sale type of pitcher (every World has them -- the guy that is lights out against lefties, but not quite as good against righites), don't you tweak your lineup to maybe add an extra right handed hitter or two to your lineup? So, if you are able to tweak your lineup before the game on the offensive side of the ball, I don't see a problem with doing it on the defensive side of the ball. Afterall, we all know that he Left handed specialist and right handed specialist only come in against the opponenet's best hitters so those settings are basically useless. I think this evens the playing field a bit.

Just realized that any starting pitcher that has his settings below 40 will default back to 40 if any pitcher is moved in or out of the rotation. Even if your guy wasn't touched, if the rotatation is altered, each starting pitcher that was set to under 40 pitches will default back to 40.

Posted by bripat42 on 1/15/2021 11:05:00 AM (view original):

Posted by tlowster on 1/15/2021 10:23:00 AM (view original):
Just realized that any starting pitcher that has his settings below 40 will default back to 40 if any pitcher is moved in or out of the rotation. Even if your guy wasn't touched, if the rotatation is altered, each starting pitcher that was set to under 40 pitches will default back to 40.

That's likely just a detail that got overlooked when the change was made and probably will be fixed. I can't imagine why something like that would be intentional.

Agreed. More of a PSA for people to be careful.